


All We Gotta Do is Be Brave and Be Kind

by spuffyduds



Category: due South
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-17
Updated: 2010-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:50:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Vegas, Ray Vecchio's trying to figure out what kind of man he can be.  Sometimes he surprises himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All We Gotta Do is Be Brave and Be Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jodie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jodie/gifts).



> Notes: Post-Call of the Wild; a bit AU for that (Vecchio never hooks up with Stella or goes to Florida.) A brief flashback to some Vegas violence. Hints of a possible threesome.
> 
> Admiration: My beta is lightning-fast and goddess-like.

After he’s sent Fraser off to get his man, Ray slides into a druggy sleep again. He really hates the drugs, they make him feel stupid-drunk and he’d vowed to himself since he was a kid that he wasn’t going to be _that_ kind of guy. But he’s got to admit that every time the woozy feeling starts wearing off, his shoulder starts up screaming, so, okay, he’ll be drunk for a few days.

When he wakes up again Frannie’s sitting by the bed, and he can’t see her face the way she’s leaned back into the shadows, but he’s remembering her sitting there when he got blown up before, and Jesus, he’s back for how many hours before he’s got her sitting by a hospital bed again?

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Frannie stirs and mumbles; she must have been asleep.

“Whah?” she manages finally.

“I’m sorry I didn’t decide to have some safe, not-getting-shot-at job,” he says.

She leans forward, putting her face into the light, and she’s _beaming_. “I don’t _care_ , Ray,” she says. “You’re back and you’re alive and you’re not gonna die, and I wouldn’t care if you got all the rest of you shot off and you were just a head in a jar. Well, I’d care because it’d be gross but--”

“I gotcha,” he says, and she beams some more and puts her hand on his and he falls asleep again.

When he wakes back up she’s still there, and his head’s a little clearer and it makes him want to--to talk, to _really_ talk, he’s had a year where everything that came out of his mouth was a lie and he wants to say something true and real and important and _him_ but he doesn’t know what, and what comes out of his mouth is, “I wanted to kill Kowalski.”

“Yeah, well, he has that effect on people,” she says. “I think that’s why they picked him to play you.”

Ray sticks his tongue out at her and she laughs but he’s not done with the truth here. He kind of knows where his mouth wants to go now, and it’s scary but what the fuck, she’s so glad he’s back and not dead she’s not gonna flinch at anything, right?

“I think I wanted to kill him because--because I opened the door and there was Fraser, and I--the first thought I had shoulda been, ‘Oh shit here goes my cover,’ but--I saw Benny standing there next to some other guy and the first thought I had was ‘ _mine_ ’.”

“Well sure,” Frannie says, nodding her head. “That’s just psychology. Kowalski had your life, and Fraser was a big part of that, and you--it’s simple Freud or somebody.”

“I don’t think--I don’t think that was what I meant. Mean. I didn’t, I hadn’t figured this out when I _left_ but--I missed everybody, I missed _you_ , but I missed Benny a lot in this...different...” He desperately wants to stop talking now and desperately wants to finally, finally say this to somebody and it feels like he’s getting pressed to death between two desperates. His shoulder’s starting to hurt.

“In Vegas....there were a few...” Ray says and Frannie’s eyes are widening and he can’t, he just _can’t_ , and then she puts her hand on his again and says, “ _Guys_ , Ray?” and he says, “Yeah.”

She squeezes his hand, hard, and he says, “Thanks.”

They don’t say another word until the nurse comes in to give him some more pain meds, and then Frannie says she needs to get home, but up until then she never lets go of his hand.

***********************************

He’s not expecting Fraser to be gone for three months. He gets a call from Benny after he’s just been gone a few days, and mostly Benny’s asking about how his recovery’s going, and then when Ray asks when Fraser’s getting back there’s suddenly a lot of really weird and nonsensical and Fraserish information coming at him, more than he can deal with, with the crackly long-distance connection and the noise of the squadroom going on around him and the fact that he keeps getting distracted by how good it is to hear Fraser’s voice.

He hangs up and waits for all that to sink in and make sense, and it doesn’t and it doesn’t, and finally he puts his face in his hands and mumbles to his desk, “They’re going looking for a mummy hand?”

*****************************

He has plenty to deal with those weeks, though. He has a lot of long talks with Frannie, who keeps trying to set him up on dates with guys she knows; he has to keep telling her he’s not quite ready for that.

“Are you,” she finally asks him, “are you waiting for Fraser, Ray? Do you think...Fraser’s...”

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. He’s got no fucking idea, but he knows there’s no way he can take some random guy out to the movies before he sees Fraser again. “He’s probably not,” he says.

“Well,” Frannie says, “I just want you to know...I’ve moved on. I mean, even if he isn’t, if you feel that way about him, I couldn’t get in the middle of...that would just be _weird,_ , Ray.”

“Thanks,” Ray says, and hugs her, and tries not to be too big-brother assholish about it when Turnbull starts coming around.

The other thing he has to deal with, those Fraser-less months, is convincing Ma that he's not crazy for wanting to move out into his own place. She has a couple of teary episodes about how she just got him back and he wants to _leave_ again, and he just--he just keeps telling her that after Vegas he needs some quiet. That’s true as far as it goes, and god knows he’s not gonna get any quiet here. But the bigger truth is that, living with the whole family, he feels like he’s still undercover. Undercover as himself, yeah, but as the self he was before he left, before he had to improvise his way through the Bookman’s habit of the occasional pretty boy thrown in with all the pretty girls. Before the dread of those nights changed into anticipation, which freaked him the hell out and he started dreading the _anticipation_ and then thought, fuck it, I could die here, I’m gonna like what I like. Before he opened that door to find Fraser looking at him, and the way that Benny’s face bloomed open in a smile didn’t change the fact that Benny was standing way too close to some strange guy and that Ray thought _get the fuck away from him, he’s mine_ before he thought _oh this is gonna play hell with my cover._

*******************************************************

It’s weird looking for a place when he’s actually got money--the last time he and Ange were just starting out, and even with their combined salaries they were pretty much looking at ratholes. This time--well, he’s been living off Armando’s money for a year while his regular pay and undercover bonuses built up. He takes his time, though, checks everything out thoroughly and...can’t seem to settle on anything.

He gets a little irritated with himself for not being able to make a decision, and then--then one morning he understands that he’s been _waiting_ , and what he’s been waiting for.

The doorbell rings and Ray yells for somebody to open it, and the kids keep thundering up and down the stairs and Ma keeps haranguing Maria for something, Ray’s lost the thread of that one, and finally Ray says godDAMNit and goes to the door himself, and there’s Fraser on his doorstep. Alone this time, and grinning like a loon, and unshaved and all mountain-man looking, his hair a little overgrown even, and Ray stands there for a minute, can’t talk, just stares until Fraser wraps him up in a hug.

And when Fraser lets go of him Ray can’t _stop_ talking, finds himself just spilling out everything about Vegas (not the guys, everything but the guys) talking like he hasn’t talked to anyone, even the reentry shrink they made him see. Frannie comes in and gives Fraser a quick hug and then gives Ray a Significant Look and, god bless her, disappears.

Finally he runs out of words and Fraser’s just sitting by him on the couch, nodding, and then Fraser says, “That is an astounding thing you did, Ray, and I’m proud of you,” and...that makes a year of terror worth it, that makes Ray feel like running out and doing another year undercover just to hear that again. He is so fucked, here.

“I...thanks,” he says, and swallows hard for a minute, and then says, “I’m looking for my own place. You wanna help?”

Fraser’s mouth quirks a little and he says, “I’ve never thought you were particularly enthusiastic about my taste in domiciles, Ray.”

“Oh, no, Benny, that place on Racine was a _palace,_ ” Ray says, and tries to keep a straight face but he can’t, has to laugh a little. He hasn’t done that very much since he left Chicago, and this one’s especially good because Fraser laughs with him.

“And hey, I haven’t heard what’s up with you. You still in that building, god forbid?” Ray says, and then gets bombarded with a story involving arson and art and perfume and rubber ducks and Kowalski diving in front of a bullet and Fraser moving into his office.

Ray makes a mental note to stop hating Kowalski, and then says, “Wait, your _office_? Jesus, that place was tiny, how long were you stuck there?” and Fraser flushes and looks away.

“You’re not _still_ ,” Ray says. “You are _kidding_ me. For a _year_?”

Fraser still can’t seem to look at him. “It wasn’t--you were gone and--nothing was going to feel like home anyway,” he says, softly, and Ray says, “Oh.”

And then he says, “Maybe we could look for a place together,” and Fraser says, “I’d like that.”

*******************************************

Fraser has a fair amount of money as well from _living in his goddamned office_ \--Ray is just never getting over that--but at first he’s still trying to push a ridiculous level of frugality, wanting to look at neighborhoods that Ray knows will make him _insane_ , and finally Ray snaps and just tells him, “Fraser, I need to live someplace where I won’t be hearing gunshots, okay? I just--I need there to not be gunshots,” and Fraser says, “Okay, Ray.”

They look at three or four pretty nice places, and Ray could live in any of them happily and he can see Fraser feeling guilty about how nice they are, but fuck it, Ray deserves to not hear gunshots and Fraser deserves to not sleep on a cot. Guy’s got a bad back to start with, and Ray is...not gonna think about that for too long.

And then they find one with this _perfect_ location--half a block from a stupendous Italian restaurant, garage space for the next Riv Ray finds, dogs allowed. (Ray has finally managed to convince Fraser that--sure, be honest if somebody _asks_ , but he doesn’t need to bring _up_ the whole wolf thing every time.)

And they go up in the elevator with the rental agent, and walk in the door, and the living room is this Southwestern color, sorta orangey, terra-cotta or something, and it’s the exact fucking color of Armando’s living room in Vegas, the living room where he had to punch Gary Pattillo in the face over and over because Gary’d made a moronic mistake and Armando’s lieutenants were expecting violence, were looking at him funny when he just tried to bitch Gary out. Where Ray had to hit him over and over while Gary just stood there and took it and sobbed _sorry sorry sorry_ and Armando’s ring caught his lip and blood sprayed, on Armando’s shirt and his carpet and Ray was finally able to stop, to get away with disgustedly saying “Get out of my fucking sight, before you make an even bigger mess,” and Gary backed out of the room bleeding and apologizing over and over for nothing but being the idiot god made him.

Exactly that color.

Ray’s cold all through and shaking and he’s somehow sitting on the floor of the living room, this living room, Chicago not Vegas, now not then, not then not there, but he can’t stop shaking and the rental agent saying “Mr. Vecchio?” sounds like she’s a long way off but then Fraser is hunkering down beside him and putting an arm around his shoulder and Fraser’s so very warm. And Fraser’s saying, “He’s had the flu, he’s still a bit wobbly, I told him not to overdo it today,” Jesus, Fraser’s telling a bald-faced lie for him, and Ray stops shaking.

Fraser gets an arm under Ray’s arms and stands him up, and the agent makes sympathetic noises and says something about getting him a glass of water and disappears to the kitchen.

“I...sorry...flashback. It...paint.” Ray says, and he sounds totally deranged to himself but Fraser nods like it makes perfect sense.

“Rest a moment and we’ll go look at the next place on the list,” Fraser says, but Ray shakes his head desperately, because--he’s putting it together now, things he hasn’t done since he got back--he hasn’t played poker because it’s too much like the casino, he hasn’t had salmon because that was Armando’s favorite, he hasn’t ridden in the back of a car because he’d feel like he was being chauffeured. “I need to stop,” he says, “I gotta stop running, I can’t keep--”

And Fraser squeezes his shoulder and heads into the kitchen and Ray can hear him talking to the rental agent about whether they could maybe paint. Ray’s pretty sure he hears Fraser offer to put down some extra security deposit. Jesus.

Ray shakes it off and walks into the kitchen, drinks his water and smiles at the rental agent and they walk through the rest of the apartment and it’s great, it’s perfect, he’s going to do this, he needs to fucking do this.

“Do you want to take some time to think--” Fraser says, and Ray says _no_ , and then--then they’re standing in _their apartment_ while the agent goes to get the papers for them to sign.

Ray turns so he’s not looking at the terra-cotta wall, he can cut himself that much slack, and he says, “Thanks for getting it.” Fraser smiles, and fuck, Ray missed that smile so much, and does he want some time to think? _No_ , and he puts his hand on Fraser’s cheek. Puts it there _tenderly_ , not a buddy-type pat or a family-type pinch, nothing but tender, nothing but _love_.

Fraser’s face does something amazing, something open and _joyous_ that Ray doesn’t think he’s ever seen before, and he’s not sure who leans first but then they’re kissing. Mouths closed but _soft_ , Ray had always wondered if it would be rough and--- _hearty_ , with Fraser, but Fraser’s lips are relaxed and yeah, just so soft against his.

Fraser pulls back and looks at Ray, and Ray can’t think of anything to say except, “I think you’re supposed to figure that kind of thing out a little earlier than twenty minutes before you move in together,” and Fraser laughs, that stupid high-pitched giggle, and Ray can’t remember when he’s felt this good.

Ray takes it slow, the next few days. He’s not sure how much of this Fraser has _done_ , with guys anyway, and Ray hasn’t done it with any guy who wasn’t getting _paid_. He doesn’t want it to be like that was, doesn’t want it to be--efficient. And besides, Ray’s still in the house with his family, and Fraser’s only got a cot. So they have a week of slow-burn teenage necking, after-hours at the consulate. It’s crazy but it’s great.

And on the weekend they get a crew of friends and family over to help paint--Huey and Frannie and Turnbull and Elaine and Welsh and Kowalski. There’s pizza and beer, and once they’ve mostly gotten the living room a nice neutral beige--Fraser keeps insisting it’s ecru and Kowalski keeps telling him that is some kind of llama--there’s _more_ beer. Ray isn’t feeling stupid-drunk, just pleasantly relaxed and fond of everybody, and they’ve all ended up sitting on the floor while Welsh talks about his early days at the 2-7, some crazy-ass cop back then who insisted on patrolling on a unicycle. Maybe Fraser didn’t bring all the nutso with him after all.

Frannie’s between Ray and Kowalski and when she says, “Scoot over, bro, you’re crowding me,” Ray scoots and Kowalski does too, and she laughs and says, “I’m not _that_ wide,” and gives both of them little shoulder-punches. Ray wonders for a minute who she was “bro”-ing to start with, but then Kowalski leans close to her and says softly, “Turnbull treating you like he oughta?” and Ray decides, hell, if Kowalski’s doing that good a job on the brother front, it doesn’t really matter.

At some point after that Ray and Kowalski end up in the kitchen together and Ray’s a little tipsier by now, and they’re of course talking about Fraser, his death-defying stunts through the ages, and Kowalski suddenly says, “So, you two, huh?”

“I--what?” Ray says, because they haven’t even talked about talking about it yet.

Kowalski waves a couple fingers toward where his badge would be if he had it on and says, “Detective, here. Not actually stupid, either. Congratulations.”

And Ray looks for the sarcasm, for the judgment, looks _hard_ , but...Kowalski fucking means it. “Thanks,” Ray says, and Kowalski grins, and the grin makes him look like a kid; Ray hasn’t seen that before.

“You’re...not gonna be bored,” Kowalski says.

“Heh, no.”

“He’s...” Kowalski waves a beer in the general direction of the living room, where Fraser is earnestly explaining something about dogsledding to Huey, who’s glazing over a little.

“He’s really something,” Kowalski says. “Of course, there’s all the batshit crazy too. I don’t envy you, Vecchio,” he says with a big shiny smile, not the kid grin at all, and Ray is _also_ a detective and also not stupid, and Ray knows when somebody is lying his ass off.

He looks sharply at Kowalski. Kowalski’s still holding the beer up like he’s just forgotten to put his hand down, or like he’s giving Fraser the world’s longest toast: _to you, buddy_. And Kowalski looks...like Ray felt for two years without ever figuring it out.

For just a second Ray has a little rush of glee, a fizzy little pop of _too bad for you, man, you had your chance._ And then feels like a shitheel, because...that was a fuck of a way to feel for two years, and because Fraser’s looking up now, looking at Kowalski.

Just for a second, and then he’s looking at Ray, smiling like Ray’s the most amazing thing he’s seen all day, and that’s...that’s real, there’s no question about it. But the second when he was looking at Kowalski, there was regret there, and that was real too.

Ray doesn’t know what the fuck to do about that. Except, except he does.

When everybody else has cleared out, when the two of them are picking up pizza boxes, getting ready to head out for the consulate for one last night so the paint fumes can clear up a little, Ray slings an arm around Fraser’s shoulder and kisses that soft spot right in front of his ear. It’s still fucking amazing that he gets to do that. It will possibly always be amazing that he gets to do that.

“Hey, Benny,” he whispers, and Fraser shivers; he’s got really sensitive ears. “I want you to be happy, you know that?” Fraser pulls back a little and smiles at him.

“You’re _back_ , Ray,” he says, “You’re back, and we’re--” he waves a hand between them. “I _am_ happy, Ray.”

“Yeah, I’m just saying--Kowalski’s a good guy, and he took good care of you, and he--I get that he’s important to you.”

Fraser flushes. “Ray, we never--there was never any--”

“I know, Benny, I know. I’m just saying, he’s a good guy, a fun guy, and I--” Ray can’t finish that, can’t wrap his mouth around all the crazy things he feels. _I want you to have everything you’ve ever wanted, anything you want ever, as long as I’m there for it._

“We should have him over sometime,” he says, and Fraser blinks, and then pulls Ray to him and starts kissing him, harder and fiercer than they’ve done it before. Fraser’s moaning and unbuttoning Ray’s shirt quickly and clumsily, and Ray’s pretty sure they’re gonna end up having their first outright sex on the carpet of their paint-reeking apartment, and that’s okay, that is going to be just fine.

 

\---end---


End file.
